Renowned entrepreneur Obi Iyiegbu, widely known as Obi Cubana, has offered candid insight into why many African businesses struggle to achieve lasting global success.
According to him, the problem lies in a lack of collaboration and an overwhelming desire for sole ownership.
In a video that went viral on Saturday, Cubana contrasted the business culture in Africa with that of the Western world.
He observed that while many Africans prefer to run enterprises single-handedly, Western entrepreneurs often embrace partnerships and shared equity to drive growth.
Cubana described this as an “I must own it all” mentality a mindset that, he argued, stifles expansion and prevents businesses from scaling beyond individual capacity.
“The reason we Africans don’t go far in business is because we want to own everything ourselves. Nobody wants to share,” he said.
“But the oyibo people you’ll see twenty owners who may not even know each other, yet they come together to make complex projects look simple.”
He also criticized the culture of building family-branded companies without proper succession planning, emphasizing that sustainability requires more than just a name.
“Our problem is that everyone wants to have ‘Obi Cubana and Sons Limited,’ whether the children are interested or not,” he noted.
“That’s why when the founder dies or becomes incapacitated, the business dies too because there’s no second or third generation to carry it on.”
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